aiza

“The procrastinator fears the discomfort of doing the work, the uncertainty of the outcome, or both. When you find yourself instinctively punting the most important projects in order to rearrange the sock drawer or play one more game, (or read one more paragraph or send one more text or. . . ), your need is exactly the same as the anxious worker bee above: to entrust yourself and your work to God. It's just that the application is the opposite. For you, faith will be pressing into what you are responsible to do. In doing so, you entrust the pain of the process (usually overblown in your mind anyway) and the eventual success or failure of your project into his hands (where it has been from the beginning).”
― J. Alasdair Groves, Untangling Emotions: God's Gift of Emotions

“My mom was a sayyed from the bloodline of the Prophet (which you know about now). In Iran, if you convert from Islam to Christianity or Judaism, it’s a capital crime.

That means if they find you guilty in religious court, they kill you. But if you convert to something else, like Buddhism or something, then it’s not so bad. Probably because Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are sister religions, and you always have the worst fights with your sister.

And probably nothing happens if you’re just a six-year-old. Except if you say, “I’m a Christian now,” in your school, chances are the Committee will hear about it and raid your house, because if you’re a Christian now, then so are your parents probably. And the Committee does stuff way worse than killing you.

When my sister walked out of her room and said she’d met Jesus, my mom knew all that.

And here is the part that gets hard to believe: Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you.

And she believed.

When I tell the story in Oklahoma, this is the part where the grown-ups always interrupt me. They say, “Okay, but why did she convert?”

Cause up to that point, I’ve told them about the house with the birds in the walls, all the villages my grandfather owned, all the gold, my mom’s own medical practice—all the amazing things she had that we don’t have anymore because she became a Christian.

All the money she gave up, so we’re poor now.

But I don’t have an answer for them.

How can you explain why you believe anything? So I just say what my mom says when people ask her. She looks them in the eye with the begging hope that they’ll hear her and she says, “Because it’s true.”

Why else would she believe it?

It’s true and it’s more valuable than seven million dollars in gold coins, and thousands of acres of Persian countryside, and ten years of education to get a medical degree, and all your family, and a home, and the best cream puffs of Jolfa, and even maybe your life.

My mom wouldn’t have made the trade otherwise.

If you believe it’s true, that there is a God and He wants you to believe in Him and He sent His Son to die for you—then it has to take over your life. It has to be worth more than everything else, because heaven’s waiting on the other side.

That or Sima is insane.

There’s no middle. You can’t say it’s a quirky thing she thinks sometimes, cause she went all the way with it.

If it’s not true, she made a giant mistake.

But she doesn’t think so.

She had all that wealth, the love of all those people she helped in her clinic. They treated her like a queen. She was a sayyed.

And she’s poor now.

People spit on her on buses. She’s a refugee in places people hate refugees, with a husband who hits harder than a second-degree black belt because he’s a third-degree black belt. And she’ll tell you—it’s worth it. Jesus is better.

It’s true.

We can keep talking about it, keep grinding our teeth on why Sima converted, since it turned the fate of everybody in the story. It’s why we’re here hiding in Oklahoma.

We can wonder and question and disagree. You can be certain she’s dead wrong.

But you can’t make Sima agree with you.

It’s true.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

This whole story hinges on it.

Sima—who was such a fierce Muslim that she marched for the Revolution, who studied the Quran the way very few people do read the Bible and knew in her heart that it was true.”
― Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad Is Untrue

“Trials will confront your theology and expose your weaknesses and limitations more than you ever thought that they would - but the trials will not consume you.”
― Kristen Rosener, Where Joy Is: Finding Joy in the Midst of Suffering

“Weakness means we don't have what it takes. It means we are not sovereign, omniscient, or invincible. We are not in control, we don't know everything, and we can be stopped. Weakness means that we desperately need God.

P. 52

Most of you didn't come to faith in Jesus with the intellectual endorsement of secular scholars or the accolades of worldly fame. The truth is, you are weak all around. You are weak, plain and simple. But in your weakness, God has called you, and therefore you have entered seminary for theological training. You go to seminary to grow, yes. You go to seminary to learn and steward your gifts, absolutely. But here's the thing: the goal of seminary is not to become unweak.

P. 52-53”
― David Mathis, Jonathan Parnell